Sudan: Regime digs its own grave in face of popular uprising
By Meera Zoll
June 24/July 1, 2012 -- Green Left Weekly -- Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) regime is facing rising dissent after a new round of youth protests began on June 16 against austerity measures, spreading throughout the week to cities and towns across Sudan.
Protesters and security forces have clashed daily as the government of President Omer Al Bashir struggles to prevent a widespread uprising.
Sudan’s economy has been in a downward spiral since South Sudan’s secession last July. Most of the two countries’ combined oil reserves are located in the south, so Khartoum lost about 75% of its oil income after the split. Inflation reached 30% in May and the cost of basic necessities has rocketed, devastating the already impoverished population.
In a June 12 meeting, the National Consensus Forces (NCF), which comprises the major opposition parties including the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) and the National Umma Party, decided to initiate a mass campaign to topple the regime in response to the planned removal of fuel subsidies. It discussed an interim plan for a three-year transitional period after the regime’s projected downfall.
Washington and the Cuban Revolution: Ballad of a never-ending policy – the myth of the ‘Miami Lobby’
Passengers prepare to board a flight to Cuba from Fort Lauderdale."Ever-growing numbers, at or near majority levels, of Cuban-Americans favour normal r
South Africa's Democratic Left Front: 'Solidarity with the women and workers of Greece'
Statement by the Democratic Left Front (South Africa)
July 2, 2012 -- The Democratic Left Front (DLF – South Africa) expresses its full solidarity with the women, workers, progressive mass movements and the SYRIZA party of Greece as they face the deep effects of the EU-inspired austerity onslaught. The Greek austerity plan involves cuts of 11.6 billion euros ($14.5 billion) by 2014. This amount will come from brutal cuts in budgets for health, wages and pensions. It will also mean hundrends of thousands of job losses in the Greek public sector. This austerity plan is meant to make the workers and the poor pay.
South African workers and unemployed people have faced a similar onslaught for the last 18 years under neo-liberal African National Congress (ANC) rule.
In the June 17 elections, the anti-austerity SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) came a close second with 26.9% of the vote. The right-wing New Democracy won the elections with more than 29%, amid huge blackmail and threats from major European governments and financial institutions.
William Dudley (Big Bill) Haywood, US labour movement leader, marching with strikers in Lowell, Massachusetts, circa 1912.
Debate: Cuba has a state bureaucratic *system* – a response to Chris Slee
This article is a reply to "System or siege?
United States: The Fourth of July -- theirs and ours
By Dimitris Fasfalis
Video: Pablo Solon on what’s next after Rio+20
June 26, 2012 – Pablo Solon, former climate change negotiator for Bolivia and now head of Focus on the Global South, discusses what next for the international
Ireland: Shock, austerity, Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance
Video: Stop the financialisation of nature!
Ecuador: ¿Nueva izquierda o nuevo colonialismo?
[In English at http://links.org.au/node/2918.]
Por Federico Fuentes, traducido para Rebelión por Christine Lewis Carroll
25-06-2012 -- Rebelión -- La crítica a los gobiernos radicales de América Latina se ha convertido en moneda corriente entre gran parte de la izquierda internacional. Ninguno se ha escapado de la crítica, pero el gobierno del Presidente Rafael Correa de Ecuador ha sido un blanco significativo.
Pero el problema de la crítica dirigida contra Correa es que carece de cualquier base sólida y desvía la atención del verdadero enemigo.
Correa fue elegido presidente en 2006 después de más de una década de rebeliones, principalmente indígenas, en contra del neoliberalismo.
Durante la campaña electoral, el economista radical prometió reescribir la constitución del país, rechazar cualquier acuerdo de libre comercio con Washington, negarse a pagar las deudas externas ilegítimas y cerrar una base militar estadounidense en suelo ecuatoriano.
Los movimientos sociales habían hecho la campaña en torno a estas demandas, que es a su vez la razón del apoyo mayoritario a Correa en la segunda vuelta electoral contra Álvaro Noboa, el hombre más rico de Ecuador.
One divides into two – Nepal’s Maoists in crisis
Many fighters of the People's Liberation Army have joined the new party.
June 23, 2012 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, an earlier version of this article was posted at International Viewpoint – The Maoist party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) -- UCPN(M), has entered a crisis and has split. On June 16-18, 2012, the radical faction of the party held a national convention and decided to organise the first congress of a new revolutionary party, named CPN–Maoist, to be held on February 12, 2013. One-third of the central committee members of the UCPN(M) have joined the new party. Alex de Jong looks at the background to this development.
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